Yellow leading edges?

So a friend of mine at work who builds large scale aircraft and armor, asked me why most if not all British aircraft from WWII have yellow leading edges? I undstand the tape over the gun muzzles, to determine if that gun fired, but really no clue about the leading edges. Any thoughts, facts, or ideas?

The Japanese had colored leading edges on many of their aircraft, a yellow/orange I think it was, and we used a white leading edge and sometimes a partial white tail too. t could have been used to identify a wing or squadron or just to help make aircraft ID easier.

The "tape" over the gun openings was not to see if the gun fired. Plenty of other ways to know that. It was to keep the muzzle from icing over.

It was a piece of fabric like the same used on control surfaces, doped onto the wing leading edge.

Usually the guy who did it was called "Dopey".

I don't know about "Dopey", but the basic tape reason is icing. But not of the bore. I was just reading about this. The Browning .30's used in the early Spitfire and Hurricanes fired from an open bolt and the operating mechanism would freeze up at alititude. The gun bores were taped over and ducting added in the wings to draw heated air from the wing mounted coolers to eliminate the problem. The later 20mm cannon had no such problems.

Back to the subject of ID markings, most countries used one form or another during WWII. The most famous probably being the D-Day "Invasion Stripes". But colors and placement depended very much upon theater and time. In the MTO, Allied aircraft started with a red spinner and the tri color tail flash. Later yellow bands were added to the wings. At the same place and time the Axis used white spinners, wingtips and tail bands.

Eastern and Western Europe had different colors and markings for Axis and Allied aircraft.Yellow was used by the Germans in Europe on the under wingtip surfaces and lower cowl for ID purposes, as were the later spiral spinners.

The Pacific and CBI theaters saw lots of white used by the Allies on wing leading edges, stripes, or tail surfaces, while the Japanese used the orange yellow wing leading edges previously mentioned. Japanese aircraft in the home islands often had a white band around the wing under the Hinomaru as an additional ID marking.

Hi, Pawel! Most of my references say that most of the Pacific fighting wasn't done at high altitudes, and that the tape over the gun ports was for keeping out the dirt & mud. Most of the Marine aircraft were used for ground support missions in addition to fighter CAP and escort missions. Lots of dirt and mud during the monsoon seasons to plug up a gun barrel or two.

As someone mentioned earlier, the Browning .303 machine guns fired from an open bolt position. They also did not have heaters on the guns. The M-2 machine guns that US fighters used fired from closed bolt and had heaters installed on them. M-2 is the only large caliber machine gun I can think of that fires from a closed bolt. The M-2 used the J-1 heater in earlier aircraft, and the J-4 heater in later ones. To my knowledge, the .303 was never equipped with a heater unit.

OK, I've also heard that it was common practice to tape over the muzzles on Corsairs and Hellcats in the Pacific--especially land-based examples. In the Pacific, it was common for the runways and taxiways to be made from crushed coral, and taping over them helped to keep the coral dust out. Sometimes, they would also tape up more than the number of guns actually on the plane, I guess they thought it would scare the enemy. Here's an example of an early Corsair, 1943, in the Solomons.....check out the 8 tape spots....